I do apologize for this post being late and shorter than usual but work was really rough this week and I’m kind of catching up with myself this weekend.

The biggest hidden part of your cable bill is the bill you pay for your local channels. So-called Retransmission Consent fees are huge, and growing every year, becoming an ever-more important part of the revenue for the major networks, and the local channels.

Is the Barack Obama Administration more than a mite out of control when it comes to imposing new regulations? Indeed so. Regulations Under Obama Cost Households $14,768 Yearly Obama Hits the Gas on Regs Regulations Take $1.8 Trillion Bite Out of Economy Is the Obama Administration more than a little off on their regulations assessments? Indeed so. Obama Regs Cost 20-Times Admin’s Estimate Twenty 9-0 | Read More »

So after Republicans went ahead and avoided major Retransmission Consent reform in the satellite TV reauthorization bill, it turns out the Senate is going to take its own stab at reform.

You see, right now the way that local broadcasters and local cable companies make deals is governed by a set of government mandates called the Retransmission Consent framework. This framework heavily favors broadcasters, on purpose, as an attempt to pick winners and losers in government.

So barring a free market option, we have to decide whether the new option is more or less distorting of the market. I think I support the LOCAL CHOICE plan by Jay Rockefeller and John Thune.

The Barack Obama Administration has spent just about its entire tenure doing things it is not supposed to do. The myriad executive branch Departments, Agencies, Commissions and Boards have been in omni-directional fashion vastly exceeding their authority – doing things that are clearly the Constitutional purview of (amongst other others) the legislative and judicial branches. In so doing, these many Leviathan tentacles leave unattended the | Read More »

Unanimous Supreme Court rulings are certainly noteworthy. When a case lines up every single Justice – appointed by Democrats and Republicans both – the decision must be unbelievably clear cut. Nine-to-nothings don’t happen very often. The ever-overreaching Barack Obama Administration, however, is in historic fashion racking them up. And they ain’t in its favor. So there is bipartisanship in Washington – against this Administration. When | Read More »

Unanimous Supreme Court rulings are certainly noteworthy. When a case lines up every single Justice – appointed by Democrats and Republicans both – the decision must be unbelievably clear cut. Nine-to-nothings don’t happen very often. The ever-overreaching Barack Obama Administration, however, is in historic fashion racking them up. And they ain’t in its favor. So there is bipartisanship in Washington – against this Administration. When | Read More »

Conservatives often talk about how government picks winners and losers, but sometimes it’s important to discuss just how that is done. It’s easy to see in cases like Solyndra where government picks winners, but sometimes it’s harder to see when government is making one industry win at the expense of another.

Laws related to technology are full of examples like that, and tonight I’m going to illustrate two important ways government makes broadcasters winners at the expense of cable companies and content producers.

The Media Marxist Left pushing the terrible Internet policy known as Network Neutrality oft are absurdly called “consumer groups.” Major U.S. Consumer Groups Support (Federal Communications Commission) FCC Action on Net Neutrality They want Net Neutrality because they want a single-payer government Web – they want the government to be your sole Internet Service Provider (ISP). “(T)he ultimate goal is to get rid of the | Read More »

Shortly after Tom Wheeler assumed the Chairmanship at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), he summed up his regulatory philosophy as “competition, competition, competition.” Promoting competition has been the norm in communications policy since Congress adopted the Telecommunications Act of 1996 in order to “promote competition and reduce regulation.” The 1996 Act has largely succeeded in achieving competition in communications markets with one glaring exception: broadcast television. In stark contrast to | Read More »

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Democrat Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel yesterday made a very good point. Rosenworcel: Delay Vote on Net Neutrality Rules Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel has asked FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to delay his planned May 15 vote on a draft of new network neutrality rules by at least a month…. “His proposal has unleashed a torrent of public response. Tens of thousands of | Read More »

Today is a big day in Congress for the cable and satellite (MVPDs) war on broadcast television stations. The House Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on the compulsory licenses for broadcast television programming in the Copyright Act, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee is voting on a bill to reauthorize “STELA” (the compulsory copyright license for the retransmission of distant broadcast signals by satellite operators). | Read More »

So Zombie Net Neutrality keeps on chugging along. Leftist opposition to it is growing because it contains one small nod to reality, letting people in one narrow case pay for what they use. Of course this hurts the companies who want to use lots of bandwidth but want to have that cost subsidized by everyone else. It’s funny how the left freaks out when some industries lobby, but for some reason Internet firms get a free pass.

Amusingly enough, these same leftys are going full Occutard and even getting FCC Democrats to waver. The goal of the radicals here is to eliminate any sort of idea that people should pay for what they use, making Internet investment unsustainable, and generate a pretext later for socialized Internet as a “human right.” Sound familiar? This is the same playbook used in Obamacare.

The longer you look at regulatory policy in this country, the more you run into special interests looking out for their own personal payoffs. But seriously, I feel like terrestrial broadcasters are the worst of all when it comes to acting entitled. Waah waah we’re big fat socialists and we don’t want to have to pay the people who made the stuff we’re broadcasting. Meanwhile, Waah waah we want to restrict competition amongst ourselves to retransmit our broadcasts on cable.

Virtually every company, every industry I write about in this space goes around lobbying in DC for some advantage. But nobody gets so many special protections and is so rabid in protecting them at any cost, as terrestrial broadcasters. At some point, small government folks are going to have to smash this racket.

In the late, great Harold Ramis’ cinematic classic “Animal House,” perpetual Faber College student John Blutarsky succinctly summed up the Left’s approach to policy. Over? Did you say ‘over?’ Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!… It ain’t over now, ’cause when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Who’s with me? | Read More »

In the late, great Harold Ramis’ cinematic classic “Animal House,” perpetual Faber College student John Blutarsky succinctly summed up the Left’s approach to policy. Over? Did you say ‘over?’ Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!… It ain’t over now, ’cause when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Who’s with me? | Read More »